CHAPTER 11

THE door clanged, shutting out all but a little light, and I was left
alone on my back. By the tricks I had long since learned in the
jacket, I managed to writhe myself across the floor an inch at a
time until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door.
There was an immense cheer in this. I was not utterly alone. If
the need arose, I could at least rap knuckle-talk to Morrell.

But Warden Atherton must have left strict injunctions on
the guards, for, though I managed to call Morrell and tell him I
intended trying the experiment, he was prevented by the guards
from replying. Me they could only curse, for, insofar as I was in
the jacket for a ten-day bout, I was beyond all threat of
punishment.

I remember remarking at the time my serenity of mind. The
customary pain of the jacket was in my body, but my mind was so
passive that I was no more aware of the pain than was I aware of
the floor beneath me or the walls around me. Never was a man in
better mental and spiritual condition for such an experiment. Of
course, this was largely due to my extreme weakness. But there
was more to it. I had lone, schooled myself to be oblivious to pain.
I had neither doubts nor fears. All the content of my mind seemed
to be an absolute faith in the overlordship of
the mind. This passivity was almost dream-like, and yet, in its
way, it was positive almost to a pitch of exaltation.

I began my concentration of will. Even then my body was
numbing and prickling from the loss of circulation. I directed my
will to the little toe of my right foot, and I willed that toe to cease
to be alive in my consciousness. I willed that toe to dieto die so
far as I, its lord, and a different thing entirely from it, was
concerned. There was the hard struggle. Morrell had warned me
that it would be so. But there was no flicker of doubt to disturb
my faith. I knew that that toe would die, and I knew when it was
dead. Joint by joint it had died under the compulsion of my will.

The rest was easy, but slow, I will admit. Joint by joint, toe by
toe, all the toes of both my feet ceased to be. And joint by joint,
the process went on. Came the time when my flesh below the
ankles had ceased. Came the time when all below my knees had
ceased.

Such was the pitch of my perfect exaltation that I knew not
the slightest prod of rejoicing at my success. I knew nothing save
that I was making my body die. All that was I, was devoted to
that sole task. I performed the work as thoroughly as any mason
laying bricks and I regarded the work as just about as
commonplace as would a brick-mason regard his work.

At the end of an hour my body was dead to the hips, and
from the hips up, joint by joint, I continued to will the ascending
death.

It was when I reached the level of my heart that the first
blurring and dizzying of my consciousness occurred. For fear that
I should lose consciousness, I willed to hold the death I had
gained, and shifted my concentration to my fingers. My brain
cleared again, and the death of my arms to the shoulders was
most rapidly accomplished.

At this stage my body was all dead, so far as I was
concerned, save my head and a little patch of my chest. No
longer did
the pound and smash of my compressed heart echo in my brain.
My heart was beating steadily but feebly. The joy of it, had I
dared joy at such a moment, would have been the cessation of
sensation.

At this point, my experience differs from Morrell's. Still
willing automatically, I began to grow dreamy, as one does in that
borderland between sleep and waking. Also, it seemed as if a
prodigious enlargement of my brain was taking place within the
skull itself that did not enlarge. There were occasional glintings
and flashings of light, as if even I, the overlord, had ceased for a
moment and the next moment was again myself, still the tenant
of the fleshly tenement that I was making to die.

Most perplexing was the seeming enlargement of brain.
Without having passed through the wall of skull, nevertheless it
seemed to me that the periphery of my brain was already outside
my skull and still expanding. Along with this was one of the most
remarkable sensations or experiences that I have encountered.
Time and space, insofar as they were the stuff of my
consciousness, underwent an enormous extension. Thus, without
opening my eyes to verify, I knew that the walls of my narrow
cell had receded until it was like a vast audience chamber. And
while I contemplated the matter I knew that they continued to
recede. The whim struck me for a moment that if a similar
expansion were taking place with the whole prison, then the outer
walls of San Quentin must be far out in the Pacific Ocean on one
side and on the other side must be encroaching on the Nevada
desert. A companion whim was that since matter could permeate
matter, then the walls of my cell might well permeate the prison
walls, pass through the prison walls, and thus put my cell outside
the prison and put me at liberty. Of course, this was pure fantastic
whim, and I knew it at the time for what it was.

The extension of time was equally remarkable. Only at long
intervals did my heart beat. Again a whim came to me, and I
counted the seconds, slow and sure, between my heartbeats. At
first, as I clearly noted, over a hundred seconds intervened
between beats. But as I continued to count, the intervals
extended so that I was made weary of counting.

And while this illusion of the extension of time and space
persisted and grew, I found myself dreamily considering a new
and profound problem. Morrell had told me that he had won
freedom from his body by killing his bodyor by eliminating his
body from his consciousness, which, of course, was in effect the
same thing. Now, my body was so near to being entirely dead
that I knew in all absoluteness that by a quick concentration of
will on the yet-alive patch of my torso, it too would cease to be.
Butand here was the problem, and Morrell had not warned me:
Should I also will my head to be dead? If I did so, no matter what
befell the spirit of Darrell Standing, would not the body of Darrell
Standing be forever dead?

I chanced the chest and the slow-beating heart. The quick
compulsion of my will was rewarded. I no longer had chest nor
heart. I was only a mind, a soul, a consciousnesscall it what you
willincorporate in a nebulous brain that, while it still centered
inside my skull, was expanded, and was continuing to expand,
beyond my skull.

And then, with flashings of light, I was off and away. At a
bound, I had vaulted prison roof and California sky, and was
among the stars. I say "stars" advisedly. I walked among the
stars. I was a child. I was clad in frail, fleece-like, delicate-
colored robes that shimmered in the cool starlight. These robes,
of course, were based upon my boyhood observance of circus
actors and my boyhood conception of the garb of young angels.

Nevertheless, thus clad, I trod interstellar space, exalted by
the knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the
end, I would find all the cosmic formulae and have made clear to
me the ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a
long glass wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this
wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all
absoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated
into some unplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal
punishment and guilt.

Long I pursued my starry quest. When I say "long," you must
bear in mind the enormous extension of time that had occurred in
my brain. For centuries I trod space, with the tip of my wand and
with unerring eye and hand tapping each star I passed. Ever the
way grew brighter. Ever the ineffable goal of infinite wisdom
grew nearer. And yet I made no mistake. This was no other self
of mine. This was no experience that had once been mine. I was
aware all the time that it was I, Darrell Standing, who walked
among the stars and tapped them with a wand of glass. In short, I
knew that here was nothing real, nothing that had ever been or
could ever be. I knew that it was nothing else than a ridiculous
orgy of the imagination, such as men enjoy in drug dreams, in
delirium, or in mere ordinary slumber.

And then, as all went merry and well with me on my celestial
quest, the tip of my wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew
I had been guilty of a great crime. And on the instant, a knock,
vast and compulsive, inexorable and mandatory as the stamp of
the iron hoof of doom, smote me and reverberated across the
universe. The whole sidereal system coruscated, reeled and fell in
flame.

I was torn by an exquisite and disruptive agony. And on the
instant, I was Darrell Standing, the life convict, lying in his strait
jacket in solitary. And I knew the immediate cause of that
summons. It was a rap of the knuckle by Ed Morrell, in Cell Five,
beginning the spelling of some message.

And now to give some comprehension of the extension of
time and space that I was experiencing. Many days afterward I
asked Morrell what he had tried to convey to me. It was a simple
message, namely: "Standing, are you there?" He had tapped it
rapidly, while the guard was at the far end of the corridor into
which the solitary cells opened. As I say, he had tapped the
message very rapidly. And now
behold! Between the first tap and the second, I was off and away
among the stars, clad in fleecy garments, touching each star as I
passed in my pursuit of the formulae that would explain the last
mystery of life. And as before, I pursued the quest for centuries.
Then came the summons, the stamp of the hoof of doom, the
exquisite disruptive agony, and again I was back in my cell in San
Quentin. It was the second tap of Ed Morrell's knuckle. The
interval between it and the first tap could have been no more than
a fifth of a second. And yet, so unthinkably enormous was the
extension of time to me that in the course of that fifth of a second
I had been away star-roving for long ages.

Now I know, my reader, that the foregoing seems all a
farrago. I agree with you. It is farrago. It was experience,
however. It was just as real to me as is the snake beheld by a
man in delirium tremens.

Possibly, by the most liberal estimate, it may have taken Ed
Morrell two minutes to tap his question. Yet to me aeons elapsed
between the first tap of his knuckle and the last. No longer could I
tread my starry path with that ineffable pristine joy, for my way
was beset with dread of the inevitable summons that would rip
and tear me as it jerked me back to my strait-jacket hell. Thus my
aeons of star-wandering were aeons of dread.

And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell's knuckle that thus
cruelly held me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to
cease. But so thoroughly had I eliminated my body from my
consciousness that I was unable to resurrect it. My body lay dead
in the jacket, though I still inhabited the skull. In vain I strove to
will my foot to tap my message to Morrell. I reasoned I had a
foot. And yet, so thoroughly had I carried out the experiment, I
had no foot.

Nextand I know now that it was because Morrell had
spelled his message quite outI pursued my way among the
stars and was not called back. After that, and in the course of it, I
was aware, drowsily, that I was falling asleep, and that it was
delicious sleep. From time to time, drowsily, I stirredplease, my
reader, don't miss that verbI STIRRED. I moved my legs, my arms. I
was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin. I was aware
of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious. As thirsting men on the
desert dream of splashing fountains and flowing wells, so dreamed
I of easement from the constriction of the jacket, of cleanliness in
the place of filth, of smooth velvety skin of health in place of my
poor parchment-crinkled hide. But I dreamed with a difference, as
you shall see.

I awoke. Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not
open my eyes. And please know that in all that follows I knew no
surprise whatever. Everything was the natural and the expected. I
was I, be sure of that. But I was not Darrell Standing. Darrell
Standing had no more to do with the being I was, than did Darrell
Standing's parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do with the cool,
soft skin that was mine. Nor was I aware of any Darrell Standing
as I could not well be, considering that Darrell Standing was as yet
unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you shall see.

I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. From without came the
clacking of many hoofs moving orderly on stone flags. From the
accompanying jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-
harness I knew some cavalcade was passing by on the street
beneath my windows. Also, I wondered idly who it was. From
somewhereand I knew where, for I knew it was from the inn
yardcame the ring and stamp of hoofs and an impatient neigh
that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.

Came steps and movementssteps openly advertised as
suppressed with the intent of silence and that yet were
deliberately noisy with the secret intent of rousing me if I still
slept. I smiled inwardly at the rascal's trick.

"Pons," I ordered, without opening my eyes, "water, cold
water, quick, a deluge. I drank overlong last night, and now my
gullet scorches."

"And slept overlong today," he scolded, as he passed me the
water, ready in his hand.

I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips
with both my hands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious
that I spoke in French. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when
I remembered what I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken
in Frenchay, and spoken well. As for me, Darrell Standing, at
present writing these lines in Murderers' Row of Folsom Prison,
why, I know only high-school French sufficient to enable me to
read the language. As for speaking itimpossible. I can scarcely
intelligibly pronounce my way through a menu.

But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was
born in our houseI know, for it chanced that mention was made
of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He
was mostly toothless and, despite a pronounced limp that
compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all
his movements. Also, he was impudently familiar. This was
because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my
father's servant before I could toddle, and after my father's death
(Pons and I talked of it this day), he became my servant. The limp
he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when the horsemen
charged across. He had just dragged my father clear of the
hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and
trampled. My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds,
witnessed it all. And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to
impudent familiarity that at least there was no gainsaying him by
my father's son.

Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draft.

"Did you hear it boil?" I laughed, as I handed back the empty
tankard.
"Like your father," he said hopelessly. "But your father lived
to learn better, which I doubt you will do."

"He got a stomach affliction," I deviled, "so that one mouthful
of spirits turned it outside in. It were wisdom not to drink when
one's tank will not hold the drink."

While we talked, Pons was gathering to my bedside my
clothes for the day.

"I mean" he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off
as he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips
draped my new sable cloak upon a chair-back. "Eight hundred
ducats," he sneered. "A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in
a coat to keep you warm. A score of farms on my gentleman's
fine back."

"And in that, a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two
thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace," I said, reaching
out my hand and couching the rapier which he was just in the act
of depositing on the chair.

"So your father won with his good right arm," Pons retorted.
"But what your father won he held."

Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin
doubleta wondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.

"Sixty ducats for that," Pons indicted. "Your father'd have
seen all the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in hell before
he'd a-paid such a price."

And while we dressedthat is, while Pons helped me to dress
I continued to quip with him.

"It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news," I
said slyly.

Whereat up pricked his ears like the old gossip he was.

"Late news?" he queried. "Mayhap from the English Court?"
"Nay," I shook my head. "But news perhaps to you, but old
news for all of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of
Greece were whispering it nigh two thousand years ago. It is
because of that news that I put twenty fat farms on my back, live
at Court, and am become a dandy. You see, Pons, the world is a
most evil place, life is most sad, all men die, and, being dead . . .
well, are dead. Wherefore, to escape the evil and the sadness,
men in these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and the
madness of dalliance."

"But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper
about so long ago?"

"That God was dead, Pons," I replied solemnly. "Didn't you
know that? God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty
fat farms on my back."

"God lives," Pons asserted fervently. "God lives and his
kingdom is at hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no
later than tomorrow that the earth shall pass away."

"So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of
them to light his sports."

Pons regarded me pityingly.

"Too much learning is a sickness," he complained. "I was
always opposed to it. But you must have your will and drag my
old body about with youa-studying astronomy and numbers in
Venice, poetry and all the Italian folderols in Florence, and
astrology in Pisa, and God knows what in that madman country of
Germany. Pish for the philosophers. I tell you, master, I, Pons,
your servant, a poor old man who knows not a letter from a pike-
staffI tell you God lives, and the time you shall appear before
him is short." He paused with sudden recollection, and added, "He
is here, the priest you spoke of."

On the instant I remembered my engagement.

"Why did you not tell me before?" I demanded angrily.

"What did it matter?" Pons shrugged his shoulders. "Has he
not been waiting two hours as it is?"

He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling
falsetto. Without doubt, I had bawled the nonsense out on my
way to bed.

"You have a good memory," I commented dryly, as I
essayed a moment to drape my shoulders with the new sable
cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to put aside. He shook his head
sourly.

"No need of memory when you roared it over and over for
the thousandth time till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit
you for the sleep killer you were. And when I had you decently in
the bed, did you not call me to you and command, if the devil
called, to tell him my lady slept? And did you not call me back
again and, with a grip on my arm that leaves it bruised and black
this day, command me, as I loved life, fat meat, and the warm
fire, to call you not of the morning save for one thing?"

"Which was?" I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess
what I could have said.

"Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by
name Martinelliwhoever he may befor the heart of Martinelli
smoking on a gold platter. The platter must be gold, you said; and
you said I must call you by singing, 'Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing
cucu.' Whereat you began to teach me how to sing, 'Sing cucu,
sing cucu, sing cucu."'

And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the
priest, Martinelli, who had been knocking his heels two mortal
hours in the room without.

When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me
by tide and name, I knew at once my name and all of it. I was
Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure. (You see, only could I know
then, and remember afterward, what was in my conscious mind.)

The priest was Italian, dark and small, lean as with fasting or
with a wasting hunger not of this world, and his hands were small
and slender as a woman's. But his eyes! They were cunning and
"rustless, narrow-slitted and heavy-ridded, at one and the same
time as sharp as a ferret's and as indolent as a basking lizard's.

"There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure," he
began promptly, when Pons had left the room at a glance from
me. "He whom I serve grows impatient."

"Change your tune, priest," I broke in angrily. "Remember,
you are not now in Rome."

"My august master" he began.

"Rules augustly in Rome, mayhap,"I again interrupted. "This
is France."

Martinelli shrugged his shoulders meekly and patiently, but
his eyes, gleaming like a basilisk's, gave his shoulders the lie.

"My august master has some concern with the doings of
France," he said quietly. "The lady is not for you. My master has
other plans...." He moistened his thin lips with his tongue. "Other
plans for the lady . . . and for you."

Of course, by the lady I knew he referred to the great
Duchess Philippa, widow of Geoffroy, last Duke of Aquitane. But
great duchess, widow, and all, Philippa was a woman, and young,
and gay, and beautiful, and, by my faith, fashioned for me.

"What are his plans?" I demanded bluntly.

"They are deep and wide, Count de Sainte-Mauretoo deep
and wide for me to presume to imagine, much less know or
discuss with you or any man."

"I said it was useless," he went on. "But the last chance to
change your mind was accorded you. My august master deals
more fairly than fair."

"Oh well, I'll think the matter over," I said airily, as I bowed
the priest to the door.

He stopped abruptly at the threshold.

"The time for thinking is past," he said. "It is decision I came
for."

"I will think the matter over," I repeated, then added as
afterthought, "If the lady's plans do not accord with mine, then
mayhap the plans of your master may fruit as he desires. For
remember, priest, he is no master of mine."

"You do not know my master," he said solemnly.

"Nor do I wish to know him," I retorted.

And I listened to the lithe light step of the little, intriguing
priest go down the creaking stairs.

Did I go into the minutia of detail of all that I saw this half a
day and half a night that I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure,
not ten books the size of this I am writing could contain the totality
of the matter. Much I shall skip; in fact, I shall skip almost all; for
never yet have I heard of a condemned man being reprieved in
order that he might complete his memoirsat least, not in
California.

When I rode out in Paris that day, it was the Paris of centuries
agone. The narrow streets were an unsanitary scandal of filth and
slimebut I must skip. And skip I shall, all of the afternoon's
events, all of the ride outside the walls, of the grand fete given by
Hugh de Meung, of the feasting and the drinking in which I took
little part. Only of the end of the adventure will I write, which
begins with where I stood jesting with Philippa herselfah, dear
God, she was wondrous beautiful. A great ladyay, but before
that, and after that, and always, a woman.

We laughed and jested lightly enough, as about us jostled the
merry throng; but under our jesting was the deep earnestness of
man and woman well advanced across the threshold of love and
yet not too sure each of the other. I shall not describe her. She
was small, exquisitely slenderbut there, I am describing her. In
brief, she was the one woman in the world for me, and little I
recked the long arm of that gray old man in Rome could reach out
half across Europe between my woman and me.

And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered:

"One who desires to speak."

"One who must wait my pleasure," I answered shortly.

"I wait no man's pleasure," was his equally short reply.

And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest,
Martinelli, and the gray old man at Rome. The thing was clear. It
was deliberate. It was the long arm. Fortini smiled lazily at me
while I thus paused for the moment to debate, but in his smile was
the essence of all insolence.

This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool. But
the old red anger began to kindle in me. This was the work of the
priest. This was the Fortini, poverished of all save lineage,
reckoned the best sword come up out of Italy in half a score of
years. Tonight it was Fortini. If he failed the gray old man's
command, tomorrow it would be another sword, the next day
another. And, perchance still failing, then might I expect the
common bravo's steel in my back or the common poisoner's philter
in my wine, my meat, or bread.

"I am busy," I said. "Begone."

"My business with you presses," was his reply.

Insensibly our voices had slightly risen, so that Philippa
heard.

"Begone, you Italian hound," I said. "Take your howling from
my door. I shall attend to you presently."

"The moon is up," he said. "The grass is dry and excellent.
There is no dew. Beyond the fish pond, an arrow's flight to the
left, is an open space, quiet and private."

"Presently you shall have your desire," I muttered
impatiently. But still he persisted in waiting at my shoulder.

"Presently," I said. "Presently I shall attend to you."

Then spoke Philippa, in all the daring spirit and the iron of
her.

"Satisfy the gentleman's desire, Sainte-Maure. Attend to him
now. And good fortune go with you." She paused to beckon to
her uncle, Jean de Joinville, who was passinguncle on her
mother's side, of the de Joinvilles of Anjou. "Good fortune go
with you," she repeated, and then leaned to me so that she could
whisper: "And my heart goes with you, Sainte-Maure. Do not be
long. I shall await you in the big hall."

I was in the seventh heaven. I trod on air. It was the first
frank admittance of her love. And with such benediction I was
made so strong that I knew I could kill a score of Fortinis and
snap my fingers at a score of gray old men in Rome.

Jean de Joinville bore Philippa away in the press, and Fortini
and I settled our arrangements in a trice. We separatedhe to
find a friend or so, and I to find a friend or so, and all to meet at
the appointed place beyond the fish pond.

First I found Robert Lanfranc and next Henry Bohemond.
But before I found them, I encountered a windlestraw which
showed which way blew the wind and gave promise of a very
gale. I knew the windlestraw, Guy de Villehardouin, a raw young
provincial, come up the first time to Court, but a fiery little
cockerel for all of that. He was red-haired. His blue eyes, small
and pinched close together, were likewise red, at least in the
whites of them; and his skin, of the sort that goes with such types,
was red and freckled. He had quite a parboiled appearance.

As I passed him, by a sudden movement he jostled me. Oh,
of course, the thing was deliberate. And he flamed at me while
his hand dropped to his rapier.

"Faith," thought I, "the gray old man has many and strange
tools," while to the cockerel I bowed and murmured, "Your
pardon for my clumsiness. The fault was mine. Your pardon,
Villehardouin."

But he was not to be appeased thus easily. And while he
fumed and strutted, I glimpsed Robert Lanfranc, beckoned him to
us, and explained the happening.

"Sainte-Maure has accorded you satisfaction," was his
judgment. "He has prayed your pardon."

"In truth, yes," I interrupted in my suavest tones. "And I pray
your pardon again, Villehardouin, for my very great clumsiness. I
pray your pardon a thousand times. The fault was mine, though
unintentioned. In my haste to an engagement I was clumsy, most
woeful clumsy, but without intention."

What could the dolt do but grudgingly accept the amends I so
freely proffered him? Yet I knew, as Lanfranc and I hastened on,
that ere many days, or hours, the flame-headed youth would see
to it that we measured steel together on the grass.

I explained no more to Lanfranc than my need of him, and he
was little interested to pry deeper into the matter. He was himself
a lively youngster of no more than twenty, but he had been trained
to arms, had fought in Spain, and had an honorable -record on the
grass. Merely his black eyes flashed when he learned what was
toward, and such was his eagerness that it was he who gathered
Henry Bohemond into our number.

When the three of us arrived in the open space beyond the
fish pond, Fortini and two friends were already waiting us. One
was Felix Pasquini, nephew to the Cardinal of that name, and as
close in his uncle's confidence as was his uncle close in the
confidence of the gray old man. The other was Raoul de
Goncourt, whose presence surprised me, he being too good and
noble a man for the company he kept.

We saluted properly, and properly went about the business.
It was nothing new to any of us. The footing was good, as
promised. There was no dew. The moon shone fair, and Fortini's
blade and mine were out and at earnest play.

This I knew: good swordsman as they reckoned me in
France, Fortini was a better. This, too, I knew: that I carried my
lady's heart with me this night, and that this night, because of me,
there would be one Italian less in the world. I say I knew it. In my
mind the issue could not be in doubt. And as our rapiers played I
pondered the manner I should kill him. I was not minded for a
long contest. Quick and brilliant had always been my way. And
further, what of my past gay months of carousel and of singing
"Sing cucu, sing cucu sing cucu," at ungodly hours, I knew I was not
conditioned for a long contest. Quick and brilliant, was
my decision.

But quick and brilliant was a difficult matter with so
consummate a swordsman as Fortini opposed to me. Besides, as
luck would have it, Fortini, always the cold one, always the tireless-
wristed, always sure and long, as report had it, in going about such
tipsiness, on this night elected too the quick and brilliant.

It was nervous, tingling work, for as surely as I sensed his
intention of briefness, just as surely had he sensed mine. I doubt
that I could have done the trick had it been broad day instead of
moonlight. The dim light aided me. Also was I aided by divining,
the moment in advance, what he had in mind. It was the time
attack, a common but perilous trick that every novice knows, that
has laid on his back many a good man who attempted it, and that
is so fraught with danger to the perpetrator that swordsmen are
not enamored of it.

We had been at work barely a minute when I knew under all
his darting, flashing show of offense, that Fortini meditated this
very time attack. He desired of me a thrust and lunge, not that he
might parry it, but that he might time it and deflect it by the
customary slight turn of the wrist, his rappier-point directed to
meet me as my body followed in the lunge. A ticklish thing� ay,
a ticklish thing in the best of light. Did he deflect a fraction of a
second too early, I should be warned and saved. Did he deflect a
fraction of a second too late, my thrust would go home to him.
"Quick and brilliant, is it?" was my thought. "Very well, my
Italian friend, quick and brilliant shall it be, and especially shall it
be quick."

In a way, it was time attack against time attack, but I would
fool him on the time by being over-quick. And I was quick. As I
said, we had been at work scarcely a minute when it happened.
Quick? That thrust and lunge of mine were one. A snap of action
it was, an explosion, an instantaneousness. I swear my thrust and
lunge were a fraction of a second quicker than any man is
supposed to thrust and lunge. I won the fraction of a second. By
that fraction of a second too late Fortini attempted to deflect my
blade and impale me on his. But it was his blade that was
deflected. It flashed past my breast, and I was ininside his
weapon, which extended full length in the empty air behind me
and my blade was inside of him, and through him, heart-high, from
right side of him to left side of him and outside of him beyond.

It is a strange thing to do, to spit a live man on a length of
steel. I sit here in my cell and cease from writing a space, while I
consider the matter. And I have considered it often, that moonlight
night in France of long ago, when I taught the Italian hound quick
and brilliant. It was so easy a thing, that perforation of a torso.
One would have expected more resistance. There would have
been resistance had my rapier point touched bone. As it was, it
encountered only the softness of flesh Still it perforated so easily.
I have the sensation of it now, in my hand, my brain, as I write. A
woman's hatpin could go through a plum pudding not more easily
than did my blade go through the Italian. Oh, there was nothing
amazing about it at the time to Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, but
amazing it is to me, Darrell Standing, as I recollect and ponder it
across the centuries. It is easy, most easy, to kill a strong, live,
breathing man with so crude a weapon as a piece of steel. Why,
men are like softshell crabs, so tender, frail, and vulnerable are
they.

But to return to the moonlight on the grass. My thrust made
home, there was a perceptible pause. Not at once did Fortini fall.
Not at once did I withdraw the blade. For a full second we stood
in pauseI, with legs spread, and arched and tense, body thrown
forward, right arm horizontal and straight out; Fortini, his blade
beyond me so far that hilt and hand just rested lightly against my
left breast, his body rigid, his eyes open and shining.

So statuesque were we for that second that I swear those
about us were not immediately aware of what had happened.
Then Fortini gasped and coughed slightly. The rigidity of his pose
slackened. The hilt and hand against my breast wavered, then the
arm dropped to his side till the rapier point rested on the lawn. By
this time Pasquini and de Goncourt had sprung to him, and he was
sinking into their arms. In faith, it was harder for me to withdraw
the steel than to drive it in. His flesh clung about it as if jealous to
let it depart. Oh, believe me, it required a distinct physical effort to
get clear of what I had done.

But the pang of the withdrawal must have stung him back to
life and purpose, for he shook off his friends, straightened himself,
and lifted his rapier into position. I too took position, marveling that
it was possible I had spitted him heart-high and yet missed any
vital spot. Then, and before his friends could catch him, his legs
crumpled under him and he went heavily to grass. They laid him
on his back, but he was already dead, his face ghastly still under
the moon, his right hand still a-clutch of the rapier.

Yes; it is indeed a marvelous easy thing to kill a man.

We saluted his friends and were about to depart, when Felix
Pasquini detained me.

"Pardon me," I said. "Let it be tomorrow."

"We have but to move a step aside," he urged, "where the
grass is still dry."

"Let me then wet it for you, Sainte-Maure," Lanfranc asked
of me, eager himself to do for an Italian.

I shook my head.

"Pasquini is mine," I answered. "He shall be first tomorrow."

"Are there others?" Lanfranc demanded.

"Ask de Goncourt," I grinned. "I imagine he is already
laying claim to the honor of being the third."

At this, de Goncourt showed distressed acquiescence.
Lanfranc looked inquiry at him, and de Goncourt nodded.

"And after him I doubt not comes the cockerel," I went on.

And even as I spoke the red-haired Guy de Villehardouin,
alone, strode to us across the moonlit grass.

"At least I shall have him," Lanfranc cried, his voice almost
wheedling, so great was his desire.

"Ask him," I laughed, then turned to Pasquini. "Tomorrow,"
I said. "Do you name time and place, and I shall be there."

"The grass is most excellent," he teased, "the place is most
excellent, and I am minded that Fortini has you for company this
night."

"'Twere better he were accompanied by a friend," I
quipped. "And now, your pardon, for I must go."

But he blocked my path.

"Whoever it be," he said, "let it be now."

For the first time, with him, my anger began to rise.

"You serve your master well," I sneered.

"I serve but my pleasure," was his answer. "Master I have
none."

"Pardon me, if I presume to tell you the truth," I said.

"Which is?" he queried softly.

"That you are a liar, Pasquini, a liar like all Italians."

He turned immediately to Lanfranc and Bohemond.

"You heard," he said. "And after that you cannot deny me
him."

They hesitated and looked to me for counsel of my wishes.
But Pasquini did not wait.

"And if you still have any scruples," he hurried on, "then
allow me to remove them . . . thus."

And he spat in the grass at my feet. Then my anger seized
me and was beyond me. The red wrath, I call itan
overwhelming, all-mastering desire to kill and destroy. I forgot that
Philippa waited for me in the great hall. All I knew was my
wrongsthe unpardonable interference in my affairs by the gray
old man, the errand of the priest, the insolence of Fortini, the
impudence of Villehardouin, and here Pasquini standing in my way
and spitting in the grass. I saw red. I thought red. I looked upon all
these creatures as rank and noisome growths that must be hewn
out of my path, out of the world. As a netted lion may rage against
the meshes, so raged I against these creatures. They were all
about me. In truth, I was in the trap. The one way out was to cut
them down, to crush them into the earth and stamp upon them.

"Very well," I said, calmly enough, although my passion was
such that my frame shook. "You first, Pasquini. And you next,
de Goncourt? And at the end, de Villehardouin?"

Each nodded in turn and Pasquini and I prepared to step
aside.

"Since you are in haste," Henry Bohemond proposed to me,
"and since there are three of them and three of us, why not settle
it at the one time?"

"Yes, yes," was Lanfranc's eager cry. "Do you take de
Goncourt. De Villehardouin for mine."

But I waved my good friends back.

"They are here by command," I explained. "It is I they desire
so strongly that by my faith I have caught the contagion of their
desire, so that now I want them and will have them for myself."

I had observed that Pasquini fretted at my delay of
speechmaking, and I resolved to fret him further.

"You, Pasquini," I announced, "I shall settle with in short
account. I would not that you tarried while Fortini waits your
companionship. You, Raoul de Goncourt, I shall punish as you
deserve for being in such bad company. You are getting fat and
wheezy. I shall take my time with you until your fat melts and
your lungs pant and wheeze like leaky bellows. You, de
Villehardouin, I have not decided in what manner I shall kill."

And then I saluted Pasquini, and we were at it. Oh, I was
minded to be rarely devilish this night. Quick and brilliantthat
was the thing. Nor was I unmindful of that deceptive moonlight.
As with Fortini, would I settle with him if he dared the time
attack. If he did not, and quickly, then I would dare it.

Despite the fret I had put him in, he was cautious.
Nevertheless I compelled the play to be rapid, and in the dim light,
depending less than usual on sight and more than usual on feel,
our blades were in continual touch.

Barely was the first minute of play past when I did the trick. I
feinted a slight slip of the foot and, in the recovery, feigned loss of
touch with Pasquini's blade. He thrust tentatively, and again I
feigned, this time making a needlessly wide parry. The consequent
exposure of myself was the bait I had purposely dangled to draw
him on. And draw him on I did. Like a flash he took advantage of
what he deemed an involuntary exposure. Straight and true was
his thrust, and all his will and body were heartily in the weight of
the lunge he made. And all had been feigned on my part and I
was ready for him. Just lightly did my steel meet his as our blades
slithered. And just firmly enough and no more did my wrist twist
and deflect his blade on my basket hilt. Oh, such a slight
deflection, a matter of inches, just barely sufficient to send his
point past me so that it pierced a fold of my satin doublet in
passing. Of course, his body followed his rapier in the lunge, while,
heart-high, right side, my rapier point met his body. And my
outstretched arm was stiff and straight as the steel into which it
elongated, and behind the arm and the steel my body was braced
and solid.

Heart-high, I say, my rapier entered Pasquini's side on the
right, but it did not emerge on the left, for, well nigh through him, it
met a rib tofu, man-killing is butcher's work) with such a
will that the forcing overbalanced him, so that he fell part
backward and part sidewise to the ground. And even as he fell,
and ere he struck, with jerk and wrench I cleared my weapon of
him.

De Goncourt was to him, but he waved de Goncourt to
attend on me. Not so swiftly as Fortini did Pasquini pass. He
coughed and spat and, helped by de Villehardouin, propped his
elbow under him, rested his head on hand, and coughed and spat
again.

"A pleasant journey, Pasquini," I laughed to him in my red
anger. "Pray hasten, for the grass where you lie is become
suddenly wet and if you linger you will catch your death of cold."

When I made immediately to begin with de Goncourt,
Bohemond protested that I rest a space.

"Nay," I said. "I have not properly warmed up." And to de
Goncourt, "Now will we have you dance and wheezesalute!"

De Goncourt's heart was not in the work. It was patent that
he fought under the compulsion of command. His play was old-
fashioned, as any middle-aged man's is apt to be, but he was not
an indifferent swordsman. He was cool, determined, dogged. But
he was not brilliant, and he was oppressed with foreknowledge of
defeat. A score of times, by quick and brilliant, he was mine. But
I refrained. I have said that I was devilish-minded. Indeed I was.
I wore him down. I backed him away from the moon so that he
could see little of me because I fought in my own shadow. And
while I wore him down until he began to wheeze as I had
predicted, Pasquini, head on hand and watching, coughed and
spat out his life.

"Now, de Goncourt," I announced finally. "You see I have
you quite helpless. You are mine in any of a dozen ways. Be
ready, brace yourself, for this is the way I will."

And, so saying, I merely went from carte to fierce and, as he
recovered wildly and parried widely, I returned to carte, took the
opening, and drove home heart-high and through and through.
And at sight of the conclusion, Pasquini let go his hold on life,
buried his face in the grass, quivered a moment, and lay still.

"Your master will be four servants short this night," I assured
de Villehardouin, in the moment just ere we engaged.

And such an engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what
bucolic school of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining.
He was downright clownish. "Short work and simple," was my
judgment, while his red hair seemed a-bristle with very rage
and while he pressed me like a madman.

Alas! It was his clownishness that undid me. When I had
played with him and laughed at him for a handful of seconds for
the clumsy boor he was, he became so angered that he forgot the
worse than little fence he knew. With an arm-wide sweep of his
rapier, as though it bore heft and a cutting edge, he whistled it
through the air and rapped it down on my crown. I was in amaze.
Never had so absurd a thing happened to me. He was wide open,
and I could have run him through forthright. But as I said, I was in
amaze, and the next I knew was the pang of the entering steel as
this clumsy provincial ran me through and charged forward, bull-
like, till his hilt bruised my side and I was borne backward.

As I fell, I could see the concern on the faces of Lanfranc
and Bohemond and the glut of satisfaction in the face of de
Villehardouin as he pressed me.

I was falling, but I never reached the grass. Came a blur of
flashing lights, a thunder in my ears, a darkness, a glimmering of
dim light slowly dawning, a wrenching, racking pain beyond all
describing, and then I heard the voice of one who said:

"I can't feel anything."

I knew the voice. It was Warden Atherton's. And I knew
myself for Darrell Standing, just returned across the centuries to
the jacket hell of San Quentin. And I knew the touch of fingertips
on my neck was Warden Atherton's. And I knew the finger
tips that displaced his were Doctor Jackson's. And it was Doctor
Jackson's voice that said:

"You don't know how to take a man's pulse from the neck.
Thereright thereput your fingers where mine are. D'ye get it?
Ah, I thought so. Heart weak, but steady as a chronometer."

"It's only twenty-four hours," Captain Jamie said, "and he
was never in like condition before."

"Putting it on, that's what he's doing, and you can stack on
that," Al Hutchins, the head trusty, interjected.

"I don't know," Captain Jamie insisted. "When a man's pulse
is that low it takes an expert to find it...."

"Aw, I served my apprenticeship in the jacket," Al Hutchins
sneered. "And I've made you unlace me, Captain, when you
thought I was croaking, and it was all I could do to keep from
snickering in your face."

"What do you think, Doc?" Warden Atherton asked.

"I tell you the heart action is splendid," was the answer. "Of
course it is weak. That is only to be expected. I tell you Hutchins
is right. The man is feigning."

With his thumb he turned up one of my eyelids, whereat I
opened my other eye and gazed up at the group bending over me.

"What did I tell you?" was Doctor Jackson's cry of triumph.

And then, although it seemed the effort must crack my face,
I summoned all the will of me and smiled.

They held water to my lips, and I drank greedily. It must be
remembered that all this while I lay helpless on my back, my arms
pinioned along with my body inside the jacket. When they offered
me fooddry prison breadI shook my head. I closed my eyes in
advertisement that I was tired of their presence. The pain of my
partial resuscitation was unbearable. I could feel my body coming
to life. Down the cords of my neck and into my patch of chest
over the heart darting pains were making their way. And in my
brain the memory was strong that Philippa waited me in
the big hall, and I was desirous to escape away back to the half
a day and half a night I had just lived in old France.

So it was, even as they stood about me, that I strove to
eliminate the live portion of my body from my consciousness. I
was in haste to depart, but Warden Atherton's voice held me
back.

"Is there anything you want to complain about?" he asked.

Now I had but one fear: namely, that they would unlace me;
so that it must be understood that my reply was not uttered in
braggadocio, but was meant to forestall any possible unlacing.

"You might make the jacket a little tighter," I whispered. "It's
too loose for comfort. I get lost in it. Hutchins is stupid. He is also
a fool. He doesn't know the first thing about lacing the jacket.
Warden, you ought to put him in charge of the loom room. He is a
more profound master of inefficiency than the present incumbent,
who is merely stupid without being a fool as well. �Now get out,
all of you, unless you can think of worse to do to me. In which
case, by all means remain. I invite you heartily to remain, if you
think in your feeble imaginings that you have devised fresh torture
for me."

"He's a wooz, a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool wooz," Doctor
Jackson chanted, with the medico's delight in a novelty.

"Standing, you are a wonder," the warden said. "You've got
an iron will, but I'll break it as sure as God made little apples."

"And you've the heart of a rabbit," I retorted. "One-tenth the
jacketing I have received in San Quentin would have squeezed
your rabbit heart out of your long ears."

Oh, it was a touch, that, for the warden did have unusual
ears. They would have interested Lombroso, I am sure.

"As for me," I went on, "I laugh at you, and I wish no worse
fate to the loom room than that you should take charge of it
yourself. Why, you've got me down and worked your wickedest
on me, and still I live and laugh in your face. Inefficient? You
can't even kill me. Inefficient? You couldn't kill a cornered rat
with a stick of dynamitereal dynamite, and not the sort you
are deluded into believing I have hidden away."

"Anything more?" he demanded, when I had ceased from
my diatribe.

And into my mind flashed what I had told Fortini when he
pressed his insolence on me.

"Begone, you prison cur," I said. "Take your yapping from
my door."

It must have been a terrible thing for a man of Warden
Atherton's stripe to be thus bearded by a helpless prisoner. His
face whitened with rage and his voice shook as he threatened:

"By God, Standing, I'll do for you yet."

"There is only one thing you can do," I said. "You can tighten
this distressingly loose jacket. If you won't, then get out. And I
don't care if you fail to come back for a week or for the whole
ten days."

And what can even the warden of a great prison do in
reprisal on a prisoner upon whom the ultimate reprisal has
already been wreaked? It may be that Warden Atherton thought
of some possible threat, for he began to speak. But my voice had
strengthened with the exercise, and I began to sing, "Sing cucu,
sing cucu, sing cucu." And sing I did until my door clanged and
the bolts and locks squeaked and grated fast.